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In case you missed it, the United States Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling last Friday guaranteeing same-sex marriages rights in accord with existing married couples. This led to big celebratory displays, rainbow flag waving and the changing of Facebook profile pics, and probably a lot of hot gay sex. But not everyone is on board with this legislation that will have no effect on anyone straight, and the much-maligned group of Professed Homophobes really feels like they’re getting the short end of the stick here. So I talked to a fancy, high-priced lawyer that lives in my head and asked: what rights do the homophobes have, in regards to marriage equality? The answers may shock you. If you’re an idiot.

Do I, a homophobe, have to like gay marriage?

They tried to sneak a mandatory appreciation for homosexuality in the dense legal wording of the Supreme Court’s statement, but you’ll be glad to know that the ever-vigilant Justice Scalia struck that down. The Constitution protects your right not to like same-sex marriage. Indeed, you don’t even have to like marriage at all! That hetero couple you think isn’t right for each other but went and got married anyway? You are legally allowed to think they make a crappy couple. No court in the land can stop you from thinking whatever you like about marriage or marriages, provided you do not impede the rights of those married or seeking to be married.

My church says homosexuality is wrong, but my boss at the Licensing Bureau says I have to issue marriage licenses for gay couples. What are my rights?

It is completely within your right to quit your job, or to quit your church, whichever you find easiest. You may also keep your job while silently disagreeing with the Supreme Court’s ruling, provided it doesn’t hinder your job. To wit: you must still issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples seeking to get married. The nature of the job is to issue licenses, not to act as a moral compass for engaged couples, or to let the world know you are giving a license begrudgingly. Can someone who doesn’t like fish withhold fishing licenses from eligible persons? Is a software license declared null and void if the applicant is ugly? No, these are bureaucratic dealings that have nothing to do with personal politics or opinions. Luckily, your place in the afterlife is not based on the federal and state forms that you processed, so you won’t lose any points with Saint Artemis or whoever is in charge at the Pearly Gates.

I’ve been married to my hetero partner for twenty-some odd years. How does this Supreme Court ruling affect my marriage?

It’s easy to feel like your marriage is less “cool” or unique now that people of the same sex can marry each other, but there’s no need to feel left out or like your union has been assailed. Justice Thomas was very careful to ensure that this legislation would not affect any existing marriages, nor would it change the rights granted to married couples going forward. In fact, the rights extended to same-sex married couples are identical to the rights already granted married couples around the country! It is not mandatory to marry someone of the same sex. You don’t have to get remarried in order to enjoy the privileges now afforded to same-sex couplings. Indeed, you have all of those rights already! So take a deep breath, relax and return to the same terse, strained relationship you already enjoy with your significant other. It’s your Constitutional right!

It wasn’t a selling feature of the apartment, indeed when I and my two roommates signed the lease the area around the apartment was bone dry. It was a garden apartment at the basement level of a building that had lots of problems: scalding hot shower water, days on end with no heat, an unending cockroach infestation. I’d already established a regular and fairly antagonistic relationship with my building’s manager due to these continued issues, and when I came home from work to find a steamy, brackish lake spewing from a crack in the walk in front of my door, I was pissed. Funny thing is, I didn’t realize it was sewage at first. For some reason, I decided it was runoff from the laundromat across the street which was a ludicrous thing to believe. I stormed into the house and began commiserating with my roommate: “I can’t believe all of that water out there!” I yelled, “It’s always something with this apartment!”

“Yeah,” replied my roommate, “and now it’s a river of shit.” I looked at him blankly. “That’s not sewer water,” I informed him, “it’s from the laundromat across the street. I think.” Now it was his turn to be confused.

“No, it’s shit. You don’t see the toilet paper in there?” I frowned and went back to the front door to examine the new body of water more closely. And then, I saw them: turds, bobbing around in this effluvia in which I could now clearly see wads of toilet paper. And worse, I began to smell it. Mere seconds ago, I detected no fecal odor but now it was undeniable. My apartment wasn’t surrounded by the murky but otherwise soapy water of a laundromat, but a disgusting, viscous moat of shit.

Once seen, of course, it could not be unseen. There’s more to the story, but what was so interesting to me that I was initially so sure that this wasn’t sewer water billowing in front of my house. I would have sworn to it. In fact, I spontaneously concocted a stupid story about the waste from a laundromat across the street–because, you know, coin-operated laundromats normally have dedicated sewage lines that run for blocks, for some reason–instead of facing the hard fact that I had poops at my doorstep. It’s incredible how your brain can trick you into seeing the things you want to see, instead of seeing things how they are.

We saw this yesterday, when nine people were gunned down at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The murdered, like the vast majority of this church with historic ties to abolitionism, were black, the shooter was white. Right away, a survivor of this ordeal, left alive by the shooter Dylann Roof to tell the tale, explained that Dylann expressed hatred towards black people, who “rape our women, and you’re taking over our country and you have to go.” Before he was apprehended, a picture of the shooter surfaced of him wearing a jacket adorned with flags from Apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia, which was Zimbabwe when it was a white-controlled territory. And lest you think I am up for a challenge to determine the origin of various flags throughout history, I am not. These flags were identified for me by several folks on social media who are much more knowledgeable than I.

And still, many newscasters, politicans and citizens were quick to quell any talk of racism. “This person is clearly mentally ill,” said many, implying that this made the killings apolitical. “An attack on religion,” claimed FOX News, who can no longer be faulted for lying under the “fool me twice, shame on me” rule. Few on my media feeds seemed to suggest that when a white person goes into a black church and kills only black people that the attack could be racially motivated. And that’s because they don’t want to see it, because we’d rather believe that this massacre, that cops shooting unarmed black teenagers on a bi-weekly basis, that the attempts to restrict voter rights along lines that would mainly disenfranchise black people are isolated incidents by crazies and malcontents, folks who are an exception to the rule. But the fact is that for American history, racism is the rule. Post Civil War Reconstruction began a hundred and fifty years ago and Civil Rights marches began fifty-five years ago, and we’ve still got so many black Americans laboring under a system of institutional racism that keeps white neighborhoods white, keeps menial jobs black, and maintains a general status quo that essentially allows police to shoot black people in the back and get away with it.

The reason that white America doesn’t want to assume racism as a motivation is that it forces us to look inward, at our own motivations. How we have benefited, willfully or not, from the system that has been in place in some form or another for four-hundred years. It’s a difficult pill to swallow, especially since owning up to the fact doesn’t absolve your guilt. At some point, however, we have to take notice of our own hypocrisy and see things for what they are. You thought you were surrounded by the protective aura of being an enlightened free-thinker, someone who espouses equality and freedom but actually can’t see the forest for the trees. But it turns out that your protection was a moat of shit.

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As you may be aware, the very last episode of Late Night With David Letterman will air tonight. It will be supplanted in September with a new late-night talk show starring Stephen Colbert, which will presumably be titled Late Night With Stephen Colbert. Call it a hunch. I wasn’t going to write about David Letterman’s retirement because, frankly, I haven’t watched a full episode of Late Night in about twenty years. I’ve seen interviews and pertinent clips on YouTube and the like, but I haven’t deigned to stay up late enough to sit through the entire thing. I used to, however; as a young kid watching Late Night With David Letterman was a nightly summer ritual shared by my brother and me–mind you, this is when Letterman came on after The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, so we were watching Dave during the 12:30-1:30 AM block.

I suppose I was around nine or ten when my official bedtime was lifted during the summer. I don’t remember there ever being a formal declaration, and indeed there may not have been. I had a television of my own in my bedroom, and there simply came a time that I ventured past the 11 PM nightly airing of The Honeymooners and Johnny Carson’s monologue to find out what lay beyond. For a while, my brother and I shared the one television, a chunky, white behemoth that was stolen from a hotel at some point and so got AM/FM radio along with VHF and UHF television. We would while away the evenings watching sitcoms and the occasional edited-for-TV movie, but by 11 PM we’d settled into a rhythm that would culminate with Late Night With David Letterman. And let me tell you, we fucking loved that show.

Those who never saw the show in its NBC days probably don’t know how really wild and revolutionary it was. There was a camera attached to a truss above the set that would careen about wildly and threaten to brain a member of the studio audience. There was a guy named Larry “Bud” Melman who was much-beloved by the audience but always seemed like he didn’t want to be there. Dave would have inventors, people doing Stupid Human Tricks (an offshoot of his more popular Stupid Pet Tricks), and other assorted weirdos and crackpots. Late Night With David Letterman was like a low-budget public access cable show, except that Steve Martin would show up from time to time. It was in stark contrast to Johnny Carson’s more staid, formulaic fare.

My memories of watching David Letterman are inextricable from memories of my brother, who would normally watch while stretched out on the linoleum floor of my bedroom while I watched lying in my bed. Throughout the night, I would test him on the time, which he almost always guessed down to the exact minute, a feat that amazed me as a kid (though I now suspect that my brother simply knew when commercial breaks happened relative to the half hour.) We’d both get really excited when Chris Elliot was on the program doing something weird and gross. Late Night With David Letterman in those days shaped and appealed to our senses of humor, and I doubt these episodes have aged well. We saw Crispin Glover almost kick Letterman’s teeth in, we saw Drew Barrymore bare her tits to him, we saw Harvey Pekar booted off the show, never to return–something that resonated with the two of us, since my father was a regular reader of Pekar’s American Splendor. And in the flickering light of late-night television, my brother and I bonded. We had few opportunities to do so back then and even fewer as we grew older and further apart. So to David Letterman, I tip my hat and thank you for thirty-three years of humorous service that helped shape the lives of two stupid kids from Queens.

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There’s a hip, new social networking site sweeping the internets’ social media outlets right now called Ello. You can take a look over here, though you won’t be able to see much. As Facebook and Google Plus began, Ello is currently invite-only. Presumably, the doors will be thrown open eventually and the place will be deluged with people who yearn for the days of geocities website design and who need an outlet for their ideas. Because, you know, there aren’t enough fucking internet opportunities for that already.

Ello’s big hook is that you won’t have your feed clogged with advertisements. But what they don’t promise is that your feed won’t be clogged with pithy life-affirming quotes, desperate pleas to prove your friendship, numerous listed things of no relevance or importance, and fake news stories treated as truth. The lack of advertising sets Ello apart from Twitter and Facebook, but it’s no different in this respect to Instagram, Tumblr, Google Plus, and dozens of other social networking sites known only to those sixteen years of age or younger. The point being: we are not suffering for a lack of places where we can impart our interesting thoughts without having products hawked in the sidebar. We are suffering for a lack of interesting things to post, period.

Here’s some food for thought: if you use Facebook and other social media sites, but don’t like the format, or the advertising, or the people that also post there, or anything besides your ability to burp up random complaints and musings to uninterested parties, then perhaps what you really don’t like are social media sites. The internet was not a device conceived so you could stalk your fifth-grade crush or so you can spout your uninformed opinions into the ether. You don’t “need” social media in order to use the internet effectively. So if Twitter and Co. is pissing you off, then maybe instead of building a better mousetrap you could divest yourself from these sites completely. Go ahead, give it a shot. Because these sites are only as good as the people that use them, and every person, to a one, sucks.

Be sure to follow Reggie on Twitter at @reggiereggie and on Facebook at facebook.com/reggiereggie! Irony!

I was born a male. I have lived my entire life as a male, and barring something unexpected I expect to die a male. It is not a source of pride, really, but an incontrovertible and undeniable aspect of who I am. I am a male, my astrological sign is Leo, I wear a size 11-1/2 shoe. These are simply facts about who I am.

I considered myself an “Enlightened Man” long before I’d even hit puberty. Owing largely to a strong maternal figure and a liberal upbringing, along with generally being more bookish than rowdy, I had a cadre of platonic girl friends at an early age (which, incidentally, endeared me in no way to the boys at school.) I was raised to respect women, to assume their intellect as I would assume any man’s. And for a long time, I thought I did this–even admitting an opposite sort of prejudice where I expect more from women than men, because I think women are generally smarter and better at constructing logical arguments. And so I went in my smug little way, happily traipsing along, silently denouncing the cat-calls of blue-collar workers and frowning disapprovingly at my friends’ misogynistic comments. Whatever vitriol being heaped upon men by feminists certainly did not apply to me, because I was an Enlightened Man.

Recently it began to dawn on me that I may have been, to borrow a French phrase, full of shit. There has been lots of warranted feminist outrage on the internet lately, from GamerGate to the wrongful termination of Jennifer Williams, to the #YesAllWomen twitter campaign, it seems like women are using the digital platform to take a stand for themselves. My gut reaction was to largely ignore these controversies because I didn’t think I should get involved. Surely I’ve never denigrated a woman or made her feel uncomfortable. I’m one of the “good guys,” the fellows that compliment ladies on their clothing and ask women for relationship advice and only look at their boobs for a few seconds rather than entire minutes. I believed I was supporting the fight for feminism by not diluting it with my testosterone. And then I decided to go against common sense and check the comments section.

I was absolutely stunned by the aggressive, angry responses I saw to these current events. Venomous, hateful threats of violence and rape. Denouncing what women wrote as divisive libel, women being called stupid and fake and sluts. Claims that women should take their grievances to lawyers or the police–I suppose to the Men Are Being Mean To Me Department, headed by Sergeant Don’t Worry Your Pretty Little Head–instead of bringing these discrepancies to light. It made me ashamed to have been born a male, and that’s when it dawned on me that perhaps I have been an unwitting misogynist all my life.

I have never physically hurt or threatened a woman, I don’t think I’ve even yelled at women. But I’ve definitely dismissed women for being “hysterical” or “crazy” when they complained about inequities. I’ve certainly leered at women inappropriately–and thought I was somehow better because I did it quicker than some other men. I’ve told women I like their blouse or hairstyle, never thinking that maybe women in specific and people in general don’t feel like striking up casual conversations based around the fact that you’ve been scoping them out. At a young age, I was taught that if you like a girl, go ask her out; the worst she could do is say, “no.” I wasn’t taught to respect others’ privacy and not to open a relationship by asking someone to entreat partnership with a stranger. The discrepancies between my thought and deed piled up. I considered myself a swell guy for considering most men idiots while regarding most women as geniuses. It didn’t occur to me that I was actually giving guys a pass while rigorously subjecting women to my expectations.

As it turns out, I am a male, and I feel all of the entitlement that men feel towards women–that they should be grateful for my existence, that they should be buoyed by my attention, that somehow I was doing them a favor with my condescension. I even considered my non-involvement in Feminism as some kind of benevolent acquiescence to women. “You go girls!” I thought in self-satisfaction, “Tell those nasty men off!” Never thinking that I might be one of these “nasty men,” or even that my non-involvement was more evidence that I marginalized women and their silly feelings. It’s both a comforting and terrifying thing to learn that I can have profound realizations about myself this late in life. It’s nice to know I can still learn and grow, but about what else am I kidding myself?

I find I am the subject of a lifetime of conditioning, despite my Ms. Magazine mom, and that my lifetime is but a sliver of societal conditioning stretching back to the dawn of humanity. We all come to accept some things as simply true: sex sells. Women work hard to look pretty and should be regarded for it. If a woman wears certain clothing, she wants you to gawk. These aren’t concepts I arrived to through careful consideration but by observing the world around me and being trained by the same concepts that train everyone else. We are all in this together, men and women, all of us educated from womb to tomb that boys like farts and girls like flowers, and never the twain shall meet. And, if you don’t get my point by now, that’s absolute bullshit.

How will I proceed? Well, for one thing, I’m going to cut the crap. I can silently appreciate a blouse and roundly chastise my friends for misogynistic comments. I can attempt to regard women on their merits and not based on some condescending notion about their superiority. The problem isn’t that women aren’t running the world, it’s that women by and large aren’t running shit. That even well-respected women in positions of power can be called “emotional” for speaking their minds. And I might have counted myself among those who waved off women’s problems as “Woman Problems.” The one thing I know for sure is that women aren’t going to become equal by screaming into a vacuum that no man can hear. It will be up to us, menfolk of the world, to change our perception of women and how we treat them if we’re going to see true gender equality. If you believe in fairness and respecting others as you would want to be respected, then I don’t see how you could do any less. And if you don’t believe in fairness and think women should be seen and not heard, then go fuck yourself and throw yourself into the mouth of the nearest live volcano.

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There’s been a lot in the news recently about decriminalizing the marijuana pots in the United States. The two sides of this issue seem particularly polarized: on one side, you’ve got folks clamoring that patients should have access to medical marijuana; that hemp (the boring form of marijuana) could be used to make paper and cloth while reducing our reliance on petroleum; that marijuana arrests are clogging our privately-owned prison system and forcing higher Federal subsidies to these institutions; that pot gets you high, which is a pretty nice feeling. And on the other side of the issue you’ve got people that hate fun. I mean, really, barring the conspiratorial forces that benefit financially from marijuana’s prohibition, I can’t understand why non-smokers should care. You might look down on someone that uses reefer, you might think potheads are kind of lame, but is that any reason to rail against this recreational activity? Dispense with television and smart phones if you’re so worried about citizens being vapid and unambitious, these contribute far more to people’s lameness than any gravity bong. Because the fact of the matter is that the utter nonsense my generation was force-fed under Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” programs turned out to be complete bullshit. Weed is not a gateway drug, potheads do not make effective criminals, and the worst thing to come from common marijuana use is painfully shitty music.

Medicinal reasons and the ability to purchase cheap Corona baja sweatshirts are swell reasons to legalize weed, though they don’t necessarily resonate with all people. To my mind, there is one reason that marijuana should be legalized that is shocking and compelling and should affect everyone. As detailed in the book El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo, Mexico is currently in the grip of about three dangerous Mexican drug cartels, staffed with ex-military officers trained to combat Leftist rebels in Mexico and Central America, and the stuff they do is pretty fucked up. Really fucked up, actually. Like “beheading every male member in a town and leaving their heads in the center square as an example” fucked up. Like “kidnapping children and murdering bound people in the street with gunshots to the head” fucked up. Like “bloody public gun fights that result in a dozen or more casualties” fucked up. And the main thing that started these cartels up was shipping marijuana to America. I can’t help but smirk at the disconnect between your balding high school guidance counselor taking a bong rip while the weed he smoked left several orphans in our neighbors to the South.

And the thing that causes all of this death and bloodshed, which keeps a country in terror and causes immigrants to stream across our borders, is the U.S. policy against marijuana. We’ve helped the situation along for decades, actually, stretching back to when the U.S. military contracted with Mexico to supply opium for our war-wounded during World War II. And those ex-military drug lords that fought against the Sandinistas and Communist insurgents were actually trained by the CIA. Oh, and we gave them their guns and vehicles, too, including a substantial air force via a particularly botched-up deal with the DEA. Are you getting it now? The situation in Mexico is our fault. We caused it, and we perpetuate it by allowing these scumbags to stay in business because we don’t see fit to sell and tax weed our damn selves. This trumps every other reason, I believe, for legalizing marijuana. There will be other benefits, there will be many problems, but most of all we won’t be killing a nation and its culture because of some mixed-up policies that are at least partially-founded on misrepresentations and lies. Yes, legalizing pot in the U.S. will present new troubles, and it certainly won’t do anything to reduce America’s obesity epidemic, but at least we can say that we’re not blithely contributing to some of the most sickening atrocities in the world happening just adjacent to our own country. That shit really harshes my buzz.

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A horrible thing happened last weekend: a kid named Elliot Rodger went on a killing spree in California and killed six people, wounded several others. It was another in a growing list of homegrown atrocities being committed at an increasing rate here in America. It’s gotten so common, there’s a list of questions that instantly generate once we hear about another mass slaying: Was it at a school? Were there guns involved? Were the guns obtained legally? Each one of these tragedies forces us to look at ourselves and our neighbors differently, mixing suspicion and empathy in unequal amounts to arrive at the unsatisfying conclusion that we, as a society, have our priorities out of whack. Rodger’s rampage had another wrinkle, though. It was preceded by a creepy video manifesto.

We perceive this awful, misogynistic video as unusual because it is reasonably coherent. We don’t expect our spree killers and maniacs to be so well-spoken, looking so normal. One result of this video, as well as the release of other vitriolic, hateful stuff Rodger produced, is a nationwide discussion about how women are still regarded as little more than fuck objects by our patriarchal society. And it’s been a good discussion. It led to a twitter hashtag, #yesallwomen, where women (mainly) detailed the inequities and harassment they encounter every single day. It’s caused a lot of women to speak up about otherwise routine stuff they deal with on the street, with their families and at their careers that many of us men might take for granted. It’s exposed a pervasive belief that women somehow owe men sexual satisfaction, that by not reciprocating on advances they are being prudes, or bitches, or doing something incorrectly. If the result of Rodger’s assault is that the male-dominated infrastructure weakens and crumbles, if it effects a real change in gender inequities, then perhaps we can extract some good from this terrible event. There’s one aspect of the whole thing that doesn’t sit right with me, however: it’s another case of a severely disturbed man being held as evidence of a misogynistic society.

Please don’t get me wrong. We do live in a misogynistic society. There are severe improprieties and injustices perpetrated against women in the United States that need to be addressed. But it doesn’t seem fair that the staged ramblings of a severely disturbed individual should be used to evince this fact. Yes, the way Rodgers talks in his video is in line with the way many men think–many men believe they are entitled to female attention, for sure. But many men aren’t going to commit revenge murders over it. Indeed, most men might harbor lots of misogynistic thoughts while interacting with women in a pleasant and professional way. But we don’t persecute people for thoughts, we persecute them for their actions, and the actions of Rodgers, and his justification for them, do not mirror mine in any way. I am very willing to be schooled by women in the ways I might have been less than egalitarian in my dealings. I want women to speak up, I want to know about the invisible oppressions I and my fellow males perpetrate without realizing it. But I will be damned if I’m going to let myself be lumped in with some cruel asshole who’s romanticized his first-world struggle.

I suppose the discussion is what’s important, less so the impetus. Like I’ve said, if every guy reading the #yesallwomen feed takes it upon himself to correct his behaviors, and admonish the improper behaviors of those around him, then it’s all been for good cause. It’s a sad truth that only the most outrageous, horrifying incidents galvanize people to speak up–be it about gun control, how we care for the mentally ill, misogyny, or whatever else is sticking in our craw. I merely wish it didn’t take a hyperbolic example of a young man’s anger to get people to discuss gender politics. Because I am a man, and I have certainly behaved less-than-great to many women in my life, both knowingly and unknowingly. I deserve to be called out on these instances, I want to be instructed in the passive misogyny I carry from the earliest days of being taught. But damn it, I won’t be compared to Elliot Rodger. That guy is fucking nuts.

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An airport taxi pulls up to a trendy restaurant in the Malibu Hills whose name, “Hohu” is back-lit by purple neon. The back door of the taxi opens and comic book writer FRANK MILLER emerges, pauses dramatically, and drinks in the lush surroundings. He begins walking to the entrance of the restuarant. Past the colored fountains of mythical Ambrosia, past the live mermaids playfully swimming in giant tanks, right up to the door of “Hohu” which is an exact replica of the front door of the Wizard’s castle from The Wizard of Oz. The door opens ceremoniously and FRANK MILLER steps through it.
Inside the spacious and lushly-decorated restaurant we see a single, circular table with three settings and a dim lamp as the centerpiece. Seated at the table and facing the entrance are CHRISTOPHER NOLAN and ZACK SNYDER, famous movie makers. They wave FRANK MILLER over and gesture for him to take a seat, which he does…

CN: (grinning) I’m glad you could make it, Frank.

FM: (taking his seat) Please, call me Frank.

CN: I suppose you know why we’ve asked to speak with you.

FM: Of course I know. The whole goddamned internet knows. You want to talk about Batman.

A slight and obsequious WAITER shuffles over to the table and, in a deep bow, utters

WAITER: Good evening gentlemen. May I take your drink orders?

CN: I’ll have a liter of angel’s tears.

ZS: I’ll have the chilled blood of a Dodo bird in a straight glass.

FM: A can of Schaeffer beer from 1958, please.

WAITER: Very good, sirs. WAITER exits, walking backwards and still in a deep bow.

ZS: Anyway.

CN: How was your flight, Frank?

FM: Let’s get down to brass tacks. You asked me here so we could discuss the Batman. So let’s discuss the character.

ZS: (nervously tugging at his collar) Hurm.

CN: Yes, well, no need for formalities. Obviously you know by now that the sequel to this summer’s blockbuster Man of Steel will feature Batman.

ZS: Indeed.

CN: And more than feature Batman, it will actually pit Batman against Superman. We were inspired by that scene from your historic comic book work, The Dark Knight Returns.

ZS: Oh yes. Very inspired. A runner appears with the drinks, arranges them at the table, and slinks away without ever making eye contact.

CN: We would like to pick your brain about that scene, the characters, their motivations.

FM: Cracks his beer and takes a long sip from the can. I’ll make this real simple for you. Superman is a jerk, Batman is an asshole.

ZS: (with alacrity) Ulp!

CN: Hmm, yes. Our take on Superman was a bit different.

FM: I didn’t see your silly movie so I wouldn’t know, but I assume you made him a real pansy. And he is a pansy, but he’s also a government stooge. Batman stands in opposition to that because he’s a complete asshole.

CN: Right.

FM: (continuing) See Batman’s whole motivation is to avenge the death of his parents. That’s his only motivation. But he can’t avenge them without pummeling the shit out of everyone. And that includes Superman.

CN: What about Batman’s pursuit of justice?

ZS: Yes, uh, what of justice?

FM: Are you fucking retarded? Justice? There’s no justice, just pimps and hookers and junkies and pedophiles all heaped together in a pile of shit. And on top of that pile, the King Shit of all the little shitlings, is Batman.

The WAITER sidles up to the table, again in a deep bow, and speaking to his shoes, utters

CN: Well I wouldn’t expect someone who likes Batman to describe him as “King Shit.”

ZS: (nods spastically)

FM: Of course I like Batman! I’ve written dozens of Batman comic books!

CN: Of course, we must defer to your wisdom. Tell us more about the Batman, as you see him.

FM: Well another thing you should know about Batman is that he dislikes people.

CN: What?

FM: Batman dislikes people. Doesn’t care for them. They interfere with his mission.

CN: I see. If he dislikes people, why is he saving their lives all the time?

FM: Just to shut up their whiny mewling. He sees them as annoying hurdles in his war against Superman.

CN: Batman is at war with Superman?

FM: Of course, he’s at war with everybody.

CN: What about Robin?

FM: He’s at war with him.

CN: What about Alfred?

FM: He’s at war with that limey.

ZS: Sweating nervously, ZACK SNYDER looks about ready to pass out.

CN: Why does he employ them if he’s at war with them?

FM: First of all, he doesn’t “employ” Robin. Robin is some little dickwad that keeps hanging around Batman while he’s trying to wage war on everyone.

CN: Right.

FM: It’s almost more trouble for Batman to throw Robin off a cliff than you let him bounce around during fights. Plus he can distract villains and draw their fire.

CN: But Batman is shown to clearly care for Robin in the comics. Did you ever read Robin Dies at Dawn?

FM: Oh, I don’t read comics.

CN: What?!

FM: That’s kid stuff. I write comics, I don’t read the stupid things.

CN: (looks over at ZACK SNYDER who is pale and quivering) Okayyy…

A runner arrives with plates of food, which he sets before the seated men and quickly and silently absconds, never making eye contact.

CN: I don’t know if we are going to go in this same direction with Batman, Frank.

FM: (chewing on a piece of steak) Okay, what’s your take?

CN: Extends his arms and articulates his thumbs and forefingers as a makeshift frame. The movie opens in darkness.

ZS: Nods head enthusiastically. Darkness, definitely darkness.

CN: From the darkness, we see a shadowy fist emerge.

ZS: Darkness. Pitch black darkness.

CN: Is it Superman’s fist? Whose shaded fist can this be, issuing from billowy blackness?

ZS: Lights out. Dark. Darkness.

CN: Everyone’s going to think it’s Superman’s fist.

ZS: Everyone.

CN: But it’s not.

ZS: Darkness.

CN: It’s Batman’s fist. In a sequel to Man of Steel. Can you picture it?

ZS: Boom.

FM: Yes, well, what happens in the movie?

CN: We haven’t gotten to that part yet. All we’ve come up with is the thing with the fist.

ZS: And the darkness.

CN: Yes, we came up with the darkness. We were hoping you would help us flesh out the plot.

FM: I see.

CN: Though honestly I’m not sure if we can use your hateful, spiteful Batman.

ZS: Nods slowly.

FM: Oh, so you want to use some pussy Batman? Like the Adam West bullshit?

CN: (thoughtfully) Hmm…maybe. But darker.

FM: Abruptly gets up from the table, pushing his chair back, and throws his cloth napkin onto his half-eaten steak. FRANK MILLER chews what he’s got in his mouth slowly and methodically, holding CHRISTOPHER NOLAN’s gaze with a piercing stare. After two full minutes, FRANK MILLER swallows his last bite of steak, clears his throat, and speaks. Gentlemen, you offend me. I thought you brought me here to teach you about the Batman, his motivations and complete hatred for humanity and life. But I was wrong. You’re just a couple of slick Hollywood hucksters who want to take the pure story of a complete douchebag’s struggle against sluts and jerkwads and turn it into some kind of rodeo circus. Well I, for one, will have no part of it. Don’t you know who I am? I’m goddamned Frank Miller! Good day. FRANK MILLER strides purposefully from the table and is enveloped in the surrounding shadows.

ZS: In a state of shock, begin weeping.

CN: Watches FRANK MILLER exit, then begins eating his dinner. Well that was unpleasant. Looks around the empty, darkened restaurant, and waves his fork at nothing in particular. It’s a bit bright in here, isn’t it?

Like this:

On a trip to Venice, Italy, I visited the Palazzo Ducale, the Renaissance-era Venetian palace of…Ducale, I guess. It was definitely impressive, in fact it captured my mind (and about 1 GB on my camera’s memory card) days before I visited the actual structure. Once inside the palace, I was struck dumb by all of the ornate woodwork, gold leaf trim on everything, and depictions of Jesus paneling the ceiling. Lots of pictures of Jesus. Lots and lots of pictures of Jesus. Jesus up on the cross, Jesus down from the cross. Jesus doling out bread and fishes, Jesus standing gloriously outside of a cave. There were some images of the Virgin Mary and assorted cherubs, but–Jesus Christ!–there were mostly paintings of Jesus Christ. I thought about the guys who painted this stuff, it was probably their lives’ work to decorate the ceiling of the Palazzo Ducale. And here I am, about half an eon into their future, snickering at all the naked boobs.

I figure the people who painted all of these Jesuses on the ceiling probably got really good at painting Jesus after a while. I remember seeing a documentary on Charles Schulz in the 1980s: a camera filmed his weathered hand as he drew perfect depictions of Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and Lucy Van Pelt in ink without any pencil guides. I was pretty impressed at first, then my dad pointed out that I might have seen the ten-thousandth time he’d drawn these particular characters. Years later, while ruining page after page of my looseleaf notebook trying to come up with new graffiti styles, I noticed that I developed a different relationship, a sort of understanding with the letters I’d chosen to compose my tag. These phenomenons are what happen through regular practice, through routine. Any action performed over and over, day and and day out will become rote after a time. When you first learned to walk, you had to concentrate on keeping in one direction without falling down. Now you walk and fall down without even thinking of it.

It seems like art in the Western world, specifically beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, is about self expression: we only paint Jesus when we want to. My friend Justin points out that it’s an outgrowth of the American Dream, that you can be whatever you want to be and live freely to throw paint buckets at a canvas. There’s certainly something to that, it appears as if many people get into art because they believe it to be contrary to the shackled, work-a-day world of regular pay and health benefits. There’s also the possibility that you roll the dice on Life As an Artist and come up with a financial boon. But is this something worth gambling over? You can make the most trite, banal song and license it to a commercial for lots of money. You can scribble a few lines on a page and upload it to the internet to be viewed by millions of people. Will someone stand before your work and regard it in five hundred years? What intrinsic value has been created outside of the temporal context of its creation? If financial gain is the objective, then I tell you that you’re better off at that work-a-day job collecting a paycheck.

My impression is that, based on some of the modern art I’ve consumed, that a lot of people need to go back and paint some more Jesuses. So much output in the digital age is derivative, belying their creators’ lack of acumen. Paint your Jesus, write your essays, work on your robot conqueror every single day. You will get better at whatever you pursue, and you’ll understand new things about your craft as it continues to be exercised. Don’t talk about it, be about it. And once you’ve put in your time, paid some dues, then you know that when you paint boobs, you’re doing it as an artistic choice and not for some churlish idiot to snicker at.